Tagged: black friday

Smart retailers, the kind that survive, will adjust to consumer habits. They will recognize which things people buy online and which things they still want to buy in a store. But, as the NRF pointed out again last week, brick-and-mortar “Main Street” retailers deserve a level playing field.

Online retailers should give unto Caeser what's his, a retreat needs to be made from the "War on Christmas," and boy, no retail worker should have to face the madding crowd whipped into a frenzy by the idea of shopping as contact sport.

U.S. shoppers spent $9.74 billion on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. That's a drop of 13.2 percent compared with last year, according to data released on Saturday by research firm ShopperTrak.

Tech writer Farhad Manjoo takes a look at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s growing e-commerce arm and how the world's largest retailer plans to improve online sales by leveraging social media, mobile and other tools.

Cyber Monday, coined in 2005 by a shopping trade group that noticed a spike in online sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving, is the next in a line of days that stores are counting on to jumpstart the holiday shopping season.

As Black Friday approaches, so too does the threat of employee walk-outs and protests against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville, the world's largest retailer. Here's where protesters plan to make their voices heard.

Small-business owners have amazed us with their resilience and savvy. They compete with Wal-Mart and Target. They compete with Amazon and Zappos. They collect sales taxes, for Pete’s sake, and still sponsor your kids’ sports teams and donate to your school’s silent auction. And the ones who survived the Great Recession have plenty to be proud of.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of Bentonville is upping the ante on the holiday shopping season, planning to open its doors open at 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, two hours earlier than a year ago. So how are competitors responding?

The lessons Sam Walton learned during those early, successful years of Wal-Mart allowed him to build the most successful retail chain in history. And just like the times that he took his planes up to search for potential Wal-Mart sites, it was Mr. Sam himself who was behind the stick, deciding which direction to go.